Game Attracts Top Performers In Many Fields

July 23, 2000|By BILL CORNWALL Special to the Sun-Sentinel

Many people who gained fame outside of chess push pieces for fun. Among actors, Peter Falk, Marlon Brando, Richard Boone, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin and Errol Flynn went to battle to overcome the enemy king on their checkered territories.

When they weren't capturing us with sounds and rhythms, Frank Sinatra, Frederic Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sting, David Bowie and Beatles John Lennon and Ringo Starr were all trying to orchestrate mates with their chessmen. Standout chessplaying writers were William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe and Lewis Carroll. Carroll's famous Alice exclaimed in one scene, "I declare; it's marked out just like a large chessboard!"

The Brain Games Network, a global sports company, recently confirmed the dates and location for the $2 million world championship chess match between the two highest-rated players in the world, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, both from Russia. To be held at the Riverside Studios in London, the 16-game match will run Oct. 8-Nov. 4.

Recently, Kramnik tied for first in the Dortmund (Germany) SuperGM Tournament, taking home the championship trophy after tiebreaks. The event featured Deep Junior 6, a challenging computer program that ended up in sixth place. Kramnik scored an impressive win over Junior by keeping the position closed while preparing for a decisive breakthrough. See the instructive game with this column.

Tied for first with Kramnik was India's Viswanathan Anand. Anand, rated third in the world, has been red-hot lately. Just before Dortmund, he had dominated a top GM event, the Fujitsu-Siemens Giants 2000 in Frankfurt, Germany. There, even the mighty Kasparov was left in his dust, 1 points behind. Kramnik finished a distant third, 2 1/2 points back.